♪ I got my ticket for the long way 'round ♪
♪ Two bottle o' whiskey for the way ♪
♪ And I sure would like ♪
- I'm distracted by my cleavage.
Can I say that? Is that weird? [chuckles]
Hi, I'm Anna Kendrick.
And I'm about to watch some scenes from my career.
Let's torture ourselves.
[intense music]
[upbeat music]
How do you know Scott?
- He's a friend.
- It's hard for me to keep track sometimes,
'cause he has so many friends.
I forgot how passive aggressive and awful Stacey is.
It's awesome.
Bryan Lee O'Malley who did the graphic novel,
it's based on his real sister, Stacey.
I love that she's just a little shit stirrer.
What an angel.
[dramatic music]
- All right.
- I'll be honest, when I read this script,
I was like,
"I don't totally get this but I love "Shaun of the Dead",
I love "Hot Fuzz",
and I just wanted to work with Edgar Wright."
But I do remember like this on paper being like,
"I don't know how this is gonna work,
but I'm just gonna trust that he sees it", which he did.
It's so awesome.
This is the first fight in the movie,
the first kind of like sequence that goes crazy
and then the bad guy Satya starts singing like a song.
And I remember sort of being the only one to be like,
"I think that this might be a tough buy for the audience."
Nobody like asked me to,
but I remember when we were doing my single,
just doing a bunch of reactions of like, "What's going on?
Like someone explain this to me."
I wasn't sure if Edgar was gonna be like,
"What are you talking about?"
And then he used a couple of those reaction shots
and that made me feel happy.
- It was nice meeting you.
Tell your gay friend I said bye.
- Gay friend?
Wallace! Again?
[both smooch]
The crash zoom thing at the end of this
once Kieran has fully stolen my boyfriend
by the end of this scene.
We had to do that crash zoom so many times
because Edgar's so hyper-specific.
He doesn't even let you blink.
[cricket sound]
He doesn't let you blink.
There would be specific times where he was like, "Oh."
Like, "A purposefully timed blink here would be okay."
This was very generous of him.
He wanted me to turn, react, then the crash zoom happens,
then I say the line or something like that.
Bill Pope, the cinematographer ended up taking over
just even operating the camera and the crash zoom.
And I could see like every time
we would kind of overcompensate for the other
where we had like missed the moment perfectly
and it just took forever.
To this day with Edgar, I'm like I do my own crash zooms.
So the joke is that like
if you need to do a crash zoom on me,
I'll just like get myself really close to the camera.
[sighs] People don't like that.
[upbeat music]
[playful music]
The director Jason Moore and I,
everywhere we filmed,
if we saw a cup, we would just steal it.
We had this like weird collection
to like try out once we got to this stage.
We don't know what the surface of the stage
is really gonna sound like.
Then we had to justify that the cup was there.
So yeah, someone came up with the pencils and pens thing.
I did think it was funny to just like [chuckles]
dump it out in front of them.
It feels very much like when a cat
like is testing you and is like,
"What if I knocked this over?
What would you do?"
[remote thumps]
♪ You're gonna miss me when I'm gone ♪
♪ You're gonna miss me by my hair ♪
♪ You're gonna miss me everywhere ♪
♪ Oh I know you're gonna miss me when I'm gone ♪
I had to sing something to prove that I could do it.
And I was like, "Oh well, yeah I know this thing,
but 'cause I'm a dork
and I learned to do this thing with a cup
and there's this song and they were like,
"Oh, let's put that in the movie."
The audition song was supposed to be
"I'm A Little Teacup"
which to this day, I've never asked the writer Kay Cannon
like, "How was that supposed to play?"
Like, was it supposed to just be
like a really good rendition of "I'm A Little Teacup"
'cause I don't think I would've been able to pull that off.
♪ When I'm gone ♪
- I had no idea that this moment
would become what it became.
When Universal was like,
"We should make a whole music video for this."
I was like, "What? Who would want that?"
Egg on my face.
Now when I watch it, I can see
I'm like rushing the back half of the phrase each time.
I'm being nitpicky. [chuckles]
But it wasn't until I had to record the song like
so that Universal could release it as a single,
which again, at the time I was like,
"Who's gonna want that?"
The music supervisor was like,
"I'm gonna put a metronome in there
so that you stop rushing it.
'Cause I think you do get nervous
and you're trying to just like do it really quickly."
It's like a weird nails on chalkboard thing
for me to watch this a little bit. [chuckles]
[upbeat music]
♪ Lounging in their ♪
- Oh, my God! [laughs]
♪ And planning a brunch ♪
♪ On their own behalf ♪
[Jill belches]
- Okay, wait. Can we stop? [laughs]
I haven't even come on screen yet
and I'm freaking out. [laughs]
This is, no, this is great.
I really wanna be here doing this.
This is awesome.
No, roll it. I can do it. [chuckles]
I knew you'd be discussing stopping the show
and I just thought how disappointed all the kids would be-
- You scheming little bitch.
- Please. I'm a child.
What is my voice even? [laughs]
Save the speech, rummy.
She's fucked. I'm ready.
And the goddamn show must go on.
I think I'm 16 or 17 here.
This is horrifying. Let's continue.
[jazz music]
[Jill grunts]
[glass breaking]
I'm supposed to be dressed up
as a middle-aged woman in this scene.
And I still look like I'm 12 years old.
♪ When they get depressed ♪
♪ It's a bottle of scotch ♪
♪ Plus a little jest ♪
This was my first movie.
This was a non-union film.
I got paid 75 dollars a day
and only on the days that I was acting.
Everybody in this movie went and lived
in that camp basically.
We were all just up there.
And there was no cell service, no wi-fi, no...
I mean basically, the fact that
we had running water was a miracle.
So it wasn't...
It wasn't the glamorous money-making prospect
that I hoped my first movie would be.
♪ Another chance to disapprove ♪
Oh, hey, that was a nice vibrato.
Okay.
♪ Another reason not to move ♪
♪ Another vodka stinger ♪
[Fritzi screams]
[glass breaks]
That was the first time I was introduced
to the idea of sugar glass.
But it would still like get into my skin a little bit.
Like tiny little almost like paper cuts.
Not as bad as paper cuts.
Each take I'd get little tiny bits of it in
and there'd be kinda like just little dots
of blood wounds whatever.
And they kept being like, "Oh well you know,
well let's go take care of you
and let's, you know, get first aid" or whatever.
And I remember being like, "No, no, no, I'm fine.
I'm fine, I'm fine."
And feeling like such a fucking hero [chuckles]
for being like, "I can continue, everyone." [laughs]
Oh my God.
I was 16. What do you want?
♪ Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch ♪
♪ Everybody rise ♪
The hard part of coming from theater
was that we'd finish a take
and I would be like, "Was that good?"
It was very weird to not have that immediate feedback
and to just like look at one guy, the director,
and be like, "So was that good?"
And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can move on."
And that's all you get.
So like adjusting to that was tricky.
I think I was pretty in my head about how it was going.
But I do remember this day actually
was the first time that I was like,
"Oh, I think it's going good."
The director used the phrase, lightning in a bottle,
which I was like, "I don't know what that means yet,
but I think it's good."
Yeah, like our tiny little weird movie that we were making.
It was like, "Well we do like the scene
where the insane 12 year old
poisons a girl and sings Sondheim."
Nailed it.
♪ Rise ♪
[upbeat music]
When we were five, they asked us
what we wanted to be when we grew up.
Our answers were things like astronaut, president,
or in my case, a princess.
But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer.
Well how about this?
Who the hell knows?
Can I just say...
I've said this before.
But I am just okay in this scene at best.
After we finished filming this scene,
the producers were like,
"Oh, we thought you were gonna do that thing you do.
'Cause in "New Moon" there's..."
I'm like rambling as we're exiting a movie theater.
And I ended up like going on this tangent
about zombie movies and stuff that wasn't scripted.
They kept it all in and then they gave me this speech
and they were like,
"Oh, we thought you were just
gonna like do whatever with it."
But I thought that because it was like a speech speech
that I should just stick to the script.
This isn't time to make hard and fast decisions.
This is the time to make mistakes.
Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere.
Fall in love
a lot.
[crowd cheers and laughs]
Major in philosophy
because there's no way to make a career out of that.
I mostly remember being like, "Oh, okay,
like the scene went okay.
Like, I don't know. Maybe they'll cut it.
I don't know."
And then seeing it in the movie theater,
it really was like one of those things
where you have a better understanding
of like the role that editing plays
because every time they cut to Kristen
she is so good and she is being so moved by what I'm saying,
I can't even remember if I was doing this off camera
or if they like shot this on a different day or something.
Like, either is possible.
But like, yeah, you do a little push in on Kristen
and suddenly you're like, "Wow, this speech is amazing."
Because she thinks this speech is amazing.
I am doing the bare, I don't know what I'm doing.
It's very mid, honestly.
Cut to her and you're like, "I don't know.
Maybe Jessica's onto something here."
So thanks Kristen.
[upbeat music]
I can't. I can't.
I can't [pants]
- [Tess] Can't what?
- I can't do another thing wrong. [pants]
- [Tess] Alice.
- I can't do another thing wrong.
This was actually kind of the line
and the moment where I knew, "Oh, I want to do this movie."
When she starts having the panic attack and is saying,
"You don't understand. I can't do another thing wrong."
'Cause that resonated with me so much.
Just like cuts to the heart
of being in that kind of relationship.
When you get into that like regressed, panicked state,
like those kind of simple sentences come out
and you're like, "Oh, this is really messed up."
I remember that white sweater that I'm wearing.
They kept trying to like clean it off
in between takes from the sand.
And I remember at a certain point just going like,
"I can't. I can't."
And that was kind of all I needed to say
for everybody to just know like, "You know what,
it's fine if there's sand on the sweater."
As everybody on set kind of understood the material
and what that kind of experience is like.
Something just as small as kind of like
starting half a sentence and like my body language shifting
was enough to be like, "You know what, let's prioritize.
Just like giving the performer some space."
That kind of like ease of communication
really helped me on this movie.
- Alice, what does that even mean?
- No, I lied to him.
He doesn't even know that I'm here. [sobs]
- What?
- I mean he does now. [sobs]
He called me.
- [Tess] Well why did you lie to him?
- Because I'm mad. [sobs]
My scene partner in that, Kaniehtiio, was like so amazing.
I was really obsessed with her.
She's very like her character in the movie.
She's like such a badass.
And I'm very drawn to like tall, stoic women. [chuckles]
So I think I followed her around set
like a baby bird most of the movie.
My goal every day was to make her laugh.
'Cause getting a laugh out of Kaniehtiio
was like hard to earn.
It's like when a cat crawls into your lap
and you're like, "Nobody move."
That was a hard day.
But it was also fun 'cause I had a great scene partner
and I like was totally in love with her.
Is that weird?
You wouldn't love me if you knew how bad I am.
- Jesus, is that something that he tells you?
- We bonded really quickly
I think because we knew that the material
was really challenging emotionally.
And you know, it's just one of those things
where you're like,
"Well we could get to know each other slowly
or we could just like rip the bandaid off
and be like, "Hey, here's everything
that's ever happened to me."
And I know that I actually
have a bad habit of doing that.
I call it like a classic Kendrick overshare
'cause every situation that I leave,
I'm like, "Anna, why did you say that?"
Like, constantly telling secrets and gossip
about my own life to people.
Well that was fun
and hurt my heart
and I'm gonna devote a session of therapy to that.
I hope you all enjoyed
looking at my weird baby face for that long.
[upbeat music]